Finding Earth’s exact position in the galaxy took centuries of observation and innovation. This story follows astronomers as they counted stars, measured motion, and mapped the Milky Way with ...

Astronomers have found a distant world that challenges planetary formation theory, with a rocky planet where gas giants should be.

And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Sometimes, if the night is dark and clear enough, you can look up and see the Milky Way in its arc across the sky.

Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, a cold cloud of gas and dust buried deep in one of the Milky Way galaxy’s spiral arms started to collapse. From there, gravity worked its magic. The cloud began to ...

There’s a bit of a paradox about our galaxy: it’s both jam-packed with stars and cavernously empty. The Milky Way is crowded in the sense that it holds hundreds of billions of stars, as well as ...

Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee If you’ve seen illustrations or models of the solar system, maybe you noticed that all the planets orbit the Sun in ...